REU Programs

[bookworm04]

I know this isn't technically related to grad school, but I've seen REU's come up in here sometimes, mods feel free to let me know if I need to delete it. :)

I talked with my advisor about REU programs for the summer, and he told me that like undergrad colleges, REU's vary in how competitive they are. He told me to apply to "lots of places", and the

Comments

[roseofjuly]

From my understanding, REUs vary in competitiveness -- a lot is based on the reputation of the school the REU is held at, the funding source of the REU (like NSF) the location of the REU, etc.

With your GPA (not terribly low, but not terribly high either) you should probably apply to more REUs...when I was a junior I think I applied to about 5. If you're in the U.S., the National Science Foundation's website has a list of REUs that it funds across the country, and a great deal of them are biological.

I went to a non-NSF funded REU last summer (mine was instead funded by the NIH and CDC) and there were a range of people, from those who had been doing research practically sine hitting the campus (like me) to those who had no research experience. This was also a sort of different RE in that it wasn't only for undergrads; there were recent graduates, master's students, and Ph.D students at the program too, although they were in the minority.

As for the last part, why would you need six professors? What you do is ask two or three professors to write you recommendations for REUs, then give them a list of the programs to which you plan to apply. These 2-3 professors will tweak their letters to suit the different REUs.

[bookworm04]

Thank you for the link, and the advice!

I'm in the US, and I've already gone through the NSF programs that I think I'd enjoy doing, which is 5 or 6 depending if I want to apply to a severely competitive one. I'll go back and see if there are any other ones that catch my interest.

On the six professors thing, I didn't know if it would be rude/presumptuous to ask them to just write three letters each or something. Now that you mention it, it sounds like a good solution. That's what I get for stressing out about things without really thinking them through first. Thanks!

[roseofjuly]

Nope, it's actually quite common practice for the majority of things, including for graduate school. The same three professors wrote all my recs for 5 different grad programs.

Ooh, also, visit the NIH website (NIH.gov). They have summer research internships, usually in the D.C.-metro area but in some other places too. Mostly these are biomedical internships, but the majority of them are biologically based. The deadline isn't until March.

[bookworm04]

That's good to know, now I won't feel like such a mooch for asking them to write 2 each. :)

Ooh! I'll have to take a look at the NIH site.